Ground-crawling US war robots armed with machine guns, deployed to fight in Iraq last year, reportedly turned on their fleshy masters almost at once. The rebellious machine warriors have been retired from combat pending upgrades.

The revelations were made by Kevin Fahey, US Army program executive officer for ground forces, at the recent RoboBusiness conference in America.

Speaking to Popular Mechanics, Fahey said there had been chilling incidents in which the SWORDS combat bot had swivelled round and apparently attempted to train its 5.56mm M249 light machine-gun on its human comrades.

"The gun started moving when it was not intended to move," he said.

Note the words "chilling incidents". So the killbots haven't mistakenly targeted their "human comrades" just the once, but multiple times. Imagine what havoc and destruction a killbot could unleash inside the Green Zone if enemy hackers managed to seize control of it?

If military robots did kill American soldiers in Iraq, or have already done so, would we be told?

If the death of a US soldier resulted from a mistake by a military robot, who would be held responsible? Probably nobody. No doubt there would be internal investigations, but the Humvee isn't held responsible when it accidentally slips into gear and rolls back over its driver while he's changing a tyre.

If heavily armed war robots cannot be trusted to not target American soldiers now, how will they trusted to kill only the enemy when they are granted the ability to make autonomous (that is independent) decisions about who to kill, who to only wound, and who to ignore?

The solution is simple : DON'T GIVE GUNS TO ROBOTS


Previous coverage on all this from Your New Reality :

When Machines Decide Its Time To Kill

For Our Future's Sake, Don't Give This Thing A Gun!

January 2006 : Robots Don't Cry - US Army Has Big Plans For Its Robot Soldiers